Inductive power transmission has many important applications spanning many industries and markets. Resonant induction wireless power apparatus can be viewed as a switch mode DC-to-DC power supply having a large air gap transformer separating and isolating the power supply input and output sections. Because the output current is controlled by adjustment of the input side parameters, there must be a way to communicate the output parameters to the input side control circuitry. Conventional, isolated, switch mode power supplies use opto-couplers or coupling transformers to communicate across the isolation barrier but these conventional methods are not useful in the presence of a large physical gap. Acoustic and optical communications across the power transfer gap are possible in principle but are inadequate in practice when challenged by mud, road debris, snow and ice as well as standing water. It is possible to communicate across the power transfer gap by means of modulating the receiving inductor impedance and detecting the voltage and current variations induced on the primary side inductor. However, because of the generally low operating frequency employed by the resonant induction wireless power transfer apparatus and the moderate to high loaded Q of the primary and secondary side inductors of such resonant induction wireless power transfer systems, available data communications bandwidth is severely constrained and full duplex communications implementation is difficult.
Radio frequency based data communications systems are therefore preferred as they are immune to the difficulties listed above; however, conventional radio frequency data communications systems are inadequate in several aspects. Half-duplex systems transmit only in one direction but rapidly alternate the direction of transmission, thereby creating a data link that functions as a full duplex link. Transmission data buffering or queuing introduces significant and variable transmission latency which is especially undesirable as a cause of control system instability when placed in the control system feedback path.
Conventional super-heterodyne receivers generally require rather good intermediate frequency filters to provide off-channel interference rejection. However, such filters tend to be expensive and do not easily lend themselves to monolithic integration.
Furthermore, conventional radio data links do not intrinsically discriminate against other nearby data links of the same type. This means that conventional radio based data links when employed to mediate wireless charging of electric vehicles often respond to the radio commands emitted by charging apparatus in nearby or adjacent parking slots, a behavior that greatly complicates unambiguous vehicle identification and subsequent wireless charging control.
For the safe operation of high power wireless charging, it is highly desirable to provide a communications link with minimum latency to provide safe, fast shutdown in the event of loss of load. For the safe and practical operation of wireless power transmission devices, it is also desirable that the communications link be inherently discriminatory so that there is minimized risk of crosstalk or misread communication between adjacent devices or vehicles. The communications link should be able, during operation, to assure that one vehicle communicates with only one designated ground station and no other vehicle or ground station once communications is established.